‘The Idea Of You’: Michael Showalter Discusses His Anne Hathaway-Led Rom-Com, ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ & More [The Discourse Podcast]

In this week’s episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo gets swept up in the whirlwind romance at the heart of “The Idea of You” with writer/director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” “Wet Hot American Summer”). The movie is based on the book of the same name and follows a forty-year-old woman reeling from a divorce who stumbles into a romance with a twenty-something singer from the world’s biggest boy band. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Reid Scott, Ella Rubin, and more.

During the interview, Showalter discussed the very specific societal double standard at the heart of “The Idea of You” that drew him to making the romantic comedy.

“It felt like an interesting and somewhat unexpected turn in the story is that the obstacle of them being together isn’t even them, it’s everyone else,” Showalter explained. “That felt really interesting to me. And [people say], ‘She should get the hell away from him.’ And it’s not fair. It’s not right. And I think this movie goes the extra mile to really say that. We’re not just kind of dancing on the outside of it. You really see the toll that it takes on her emotionally, on her family emotionally, on their relationship – the emotional toll of having everybody having an opinion about her private life.”

“And, I think that’s another thing that it’s a movie that is about these two people where there’s this age gap, but I’d like to think it’s a larger point about if two people are consenting adults and want to have a relationship, then everybody should just let them do that,” he continued. “If it’s not hurting you and it’s not got anything to do with you, let people live their lives however they want. And so I like the ability that a movie has to, especially as a romantic comedy, but other genres as well, to both entertain and intrigue, but also hopefully move the needle forward as to the kind of like world we want to live in.”

Many fans and detractors of the book have called it “Harry Styles Fan Fiction” due to the resemblance the story bears to his real-life relationship with an older divorced woman, Olivia Wilde, and the public shaming that followed. Showalter said that the real-life romance is impossible to ignore, but it wasn’t the only relationship that they discussed while developing the film.

“Yes, [we talked about them] but probably a lot less than you’d think,” Showalter said. “You couldn’t help but know that this had echoes of that and that there’s a fascination with [Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde’s] relationship and them as public figures. But there are many other examples of it that were happening. When we were making the movie, this was when Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian were running around. Gabrielle Union, who’s a producer on the movie, her husband is Dwayne Wade, and he’s younger than her.”

“And so it was not unique to Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde,” he added. “It seemed like something that was kind of in the air, and that felt like a good thing to make a movie about for the very reason — that it would spark conversation and then it would be something that hopefully people would have strong opinions about.”

Of course, while Showalter is now known as an accomplished filmmaker, he first gained a cult following in his early career as a comedian and performer in “The State,” “Stella,” and the cult classic comedy “Wet Hot American Summer,” the film that spread his name around through word-of-mouth, but was not met with laughs or kind reviews initially.

“It was a couple of years—two or three years after we finished the movie that it started to be this sort of—‘college kids are watching the movie,’ that kind of a thing,” Showalter said. “As a fan of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ I always think of it as like, ‘Well, it’ll never be like that.’ So I took it very hard that the movie wasn’t better received when it was first released at Sundance, and then later, it really was something that I took really hard.”

“The reviews and things that were said about it felt like, ‘Wow, people really didn’t understand what we were doing.’ And that really was hard for me to deal with because I didn’t think that it was hard to understand what we were doing,” he continued. “I didn’t understand that, but it was great to see the movie find such an audience and become such a kind of cult movie or whatever. on a personal level, it was nice, but like, I’ve never like made any money off ‘Wet Hot…’ or anything like that.”

“Wet Hot American Summer” has since spawned two Netflix series and even more fans as a result. So, have we seen the last of the “Wet Hot…” crew? Showalter isn’t certain.

“We haven’t talked about it in a little while. But you know, I’m a ‘never say never’ person,” Showalter insisted. “So I’ll always have great affection for those characters and that world. And, who knows, maybe when we’re in our 70s, we’ll do another season at camp. And we’re still playing characters in our mid-teens or something like that.”

So, what’s next for Showalter? The filmmaker is branching out into even more genres. First, “Happy Face,” a series based on the real story of Melissa Jesperson-Moore, who at age 15 discovered her father was a serial murderer. The show stars Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid and, according to Showalter, is “going to be fantastic.” He’s also going to be shooting a holiday film this summer with Felicity Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Dominic Sessa. for release in 2025.

The Playlist Presents – Michael Showalter’s Essential Romance Playlist:

1.) “Notting Hill” (1999), directed by Robert Michel

2.) “Unfaithful” (2002), directed by: Adrian Lyne

3.) “Almost Famous” (2000), directed by Cameron Crowe

4.) “Sixteen Candles” (1984), directed by John Hughes

5.) “Before Sunrise” (1994) directed by Richard Linklater

“The Idea of You” hits Prime Video on May 2nd. You can listen to the full interview below.